


Leviathan

by Amber_Flicker



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Gen, Pre-Slash, Psychological Horror, Tragedy, cisco and hartley are not the ones who die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-11 02:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15305688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber_Flicker/pseuds/Amber_Flicker
Summary: They thought they'd faced the worst. The particle accelerator had created something they couldn't have imagined.





	Leviathan

The meta is a threat they don't realize is there until it's too late. They could never figure out who it even was. They wouldn't communicate when Barry tried to talk, and their ability had morphed their body beyond recognition, a rolling mass of something like shadow but at the same time not, like staring too long would cause something too terrible to look at to appear.

The team tried to come up with all kinds of plans to fight them- _it,_ but none worked, and soon they learned just how lethal the meta was. It was almost like it was consuming the city, piece by piece, growing and growing. Most of CCPD went down within the first week trying to kill it. That included Joe.

Cisco stands on the roof of the labs and stares out at the darkness, and grants the meta a name. "Leviathan."

 

Caitlin was the second to go.

 

Frost got impatient, watching everything fall apart in the city and feeling Caitlin start to crack as well. She told them they should be doing more, doing it faster, _aren't you supposed to be fast, Flash?_ and by the end of the second week she's fed up. She goes out silently, because everyone would've stopped her otherwise. They only manage to get to her after her own powers have been aimed back at her, frozen and beginning to crack apart as the meta attacks. No one wants to watch her die like that. Cisco can't look away.

Visions of that scene never stop haunting him.

 

Iris and Barry didn't really start to let themselves fall apart until after that. Barry could no longer pretend he was okay after losing another parent figure, and Iris could no longer pretend she was stable enough to lead the team through this.

 

It was no surprise, then, that Iris was the third causality.

 

She'd always been a little reckless. Losing people hadn't helped in the slightest. She took the prototype weapon Cisco had made to kill the meta (they were well past trying to save it, now), and told them that they were either with her or that she would go fight alone. Barry took her side without hesitation, because if he couldn't keep her out of the fight he could at least fight alongside her.

The worst part was that, at first, they seemed to be managing. The gun actually had some affect and Barry kept it distracted enough that it didn't go after Iris. For just a few minutes, they had some hope that maybe this would end.

Then she gets too close, and at first touch the meta's power starts to corrupt the weapon. The dark tendrils crawl right down the metal towards her hands and Barry runs towards her to try to pull it away before it reaches. And he makes it, but Leviathan's attention has been drawn right towards them. It can't get Barry while he's in the speed force, but Iris doesn't have that luxury. It drowns her in an instant.

The team began to crumble. Harry went back to his own earth with Jesse, and no one could or would dare stop him from his escape. Oliver and most of his team had died early on trying ~~failing-~~ to keep Star city from falling prey to the ~~monster~~ meta. Thea was the only one who'd managed to make it to Central. She and Cisco managed to get Hartley on board with helping, and in any other time he might've been interested in how the two knew each other, but not now. The legends didn't help; there was too much risk. If the remainder of the team were to fail to stop this, then they would be the last vestiges of humanity left, hidden in time. No one contacts them to tell Wally about his family. No one has it in them.

 

Thea died next.

 

She and Hartley go out on a risky mission (everything is risky now, nothing ever even phases Leviathan and everyone keeps dying around them, every single attempt is a bet on the life of whoever goes out, the realization that they likely won't ever come back, and the wonder if it would make anything more painful at this point, if one more death will just leave the rest of them numb to the horror). The darkness has only grown, and before Thea can shoot more than a few of the specialized arrows, she's been swallowed up. Hartley only gets away by sheer luck, and not without injury. He's lost a hand.

It makes them wish, not for the first time, that Caitlin was still around to treat their wounds. As it is, the three of them do their best to keep him from bleeding out, and then Hartley pretends he can still help in the fight. Barry has been hallucinating Iris, his parents, Joe. None of them bring it up, because it might break something, might make it all shatter and leave them unable to function. They need the lies to keep going.

 

Barry goes out in the sort of heroic death they'd all wished would never come to be, as most heroes do.

 

It's a last ditch attempt at stopping the monster. Cisco and Hartley finally find a way to contain it, but doing so will take everything Barry has left. If he doesn't disintegrate completely, it'll be a close thing. But there is no one else, and there is no other way. No one has the optimism in them anymore to say it'll be okay, that they can do it. They barely have enough hope left to go through with this plan.

Leviathan has wandered all over the world by now, but always, _always_ returns to Central. It's bigger than half the city now, the sky blotted out like storm clouds and the air hazy. The building still stand, but the streets are empty and silent. There's a sound echoing around them, but Cisco can't identify it. It's like the static on a screen put into sound, or maybe it's the sound of people dying. It makes him want to stop hearing anything. He can't imagine what it was like for Hartley when he came out here.

(cisco wondered if the people were still in some living state in there, because the longer he lingered the more the static sounded like screaming)

Barry starts circling the mass, faster and faster, and it begins to condense. Cisco helps as much as he can with his own abilities, has to in order to keep from being swallowed up himself. The process seems to take hours, but he knows that it's only minutes. The lightning grows brighter than he's ever seen it, turns blue after a while, when they're nearly there. It starts to flicker as Cisco closes the containment cell around the thing. He doesn't let himself focus on it, instead concentrates on breaching Leviathan to an earth already barren, and when he looks up again, he's alone. All that's left of Barry Allen's existence is the memories of a few people still living and the cracked flash emblem from his suit on the ground. Cisco brings it back with him.

*******

They sit on the roof. It reminds Cisco of when this all began, and it feels like years ago. In reality it's only been just over a month. Everything seems darker and emptier now. It isn't; the haze over the city has disappeared, but the deaths of everyone hang over them still.

"What are we supposed to do now?" He says, and Hartley doesn't reply for a long time.

"Well, someone has to protect the city." _And there's no one else left._

Hartley puts his ~~only~~ hand over Cisco's. They watch the sun rise and signs of life show in the city, and it doesn't make anything better, not really.

But it's not another tragedy, and that's what they all would have wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> :)
> 
> cliches-and-coffee on tumblr


End file.
